Rubella (German measles) can cause severe birth defects if a woman acquires it d
ID: 3236968 • Letter: R
Question
Rubella (German measles) can cause severe birth defects if a woman acquires it during pregnancy. Preblud et al (1981) assessed the risk to fetuses when mothers received the rubella vaccine (which is a live attenuated virus) shortly before or shortly after they became pregnant (before they knew they were pregnant). They found birth defects in 0 of 112 children born to such women. Is this enough information to convince you the vaccine is "safe"? Specifically, a) Based on the analyses you did in (b), do these data suggest that the rate of birth defects in women receiving the rubella vaccine is higher, lower, or about the same as the background rate you found in (a). Explain your reasoning. b) Note any concerns, limitations, or cautions you would attach to the conclusion you came to in (a).Explanation / Answer
Ans a) As we the women getting the vaccine have not gotten the disease, we can conclude that the women getting the vaccine have a lower rate of Rubella
Ans b) We should also check that the data was not taken from a population of a particular region but from the population from different regions with different race and habits of people as it may be possible that we could have chosen the women who were no prone to the disease anyway and our conclusion may go totallt wrong in that case
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